chemical spills

When we think of chemicals, oil spills and toxic land, locales like Gowanus and Freshkills are among the first to come to mind. But all across the city are hotspots where spills have taken place. In an ongoing project called NYC Anthropocene, graphic designer and data guru Michael Appuhn is documenting all the areas where the city has seen these flubs since 2010, as well as some of the areas in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens storing oil, petroleum and various chemicals in bulk. While the map isn’t really anything to have a scare over—many of these are used for home heating or are fuel stations (although we won’t discount that spills can cause groundwater contamination including some public water supplies)—it’s interesting to see the distribution across the city.